Hood continues practice of favoring contributors
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that some of Attorney General Jim Hood’s largest campaign supporters also happen to get a big slice of the state’s litigation business he farms out to private attorneys.
The appearance, though, is not good. The system needs to change either to bring more competition to how these contracts are awarded, or to prohibit the attorney general from receiving campaign donations from those who do business with his office.
Hood defends the system he uses. He claims that the contracts, worth potentially millions of dollars in contingency fees, are awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis. Whoever comes to the attorney general first with a novel idea for suing on the state’s behalf gets the business. If it’s an out-of-state firm, Hood says, he leaves it to the lawyers to pick the Mississippi firm with which they associate. The contract is then put out for anyone to examine its details.
Let’s not forget that two of Hood’s biggest campaign contributors, Dickie Scruggs and Joey Langston, are now in prison for attempting to bribe a judge.
Scruggs and Langston were well-known for perfecting this ploy of spinning campaign contributions into big legal fees. You would think that Hood would rush to be squeaky clean after witnessing the fate of his cronies. Instead, the shady practices continue. Hood keeps thumbing the nose at the electorate. Not a politically wise course given an electorate demonstrably averse to politicians lining their pockets in exchange for favoritism.
Hood has appeared on numerous occasions on the editorial page of the nation’s biggest and most influential newspaper – The Wall Street Journal – and not in a flattering way. The WSJ has made Hood a poster child for judicial campaign abuse. Hood’s persistence in this regard has become an embarrassment to our state, which has already been embarrassed far too many times regarding our judiciary.
When Langston was sentenced, the judge stated, “The damage you have done to the rule of law is the real tragedy in this case.” Allowing the judiciary to be a profit center for well-connected campaign contributors is just one more chapter in this sordid story.
Northside Sun
2/18/10
